If you’re the city of Chicago, you can’t control the weather, though we’ve had a couple mayors who were definitely under the impression that they could. So a historic rainstorm on the day of Chicago’s NASCAR road race is just bad luck, unless you believe in the gods exacting justice of some sort.

“Justice” is in the eye of the beholder of course, because that would depend on how big of a misstep one thinks tying up downtown for a couple weeks and inconveniencing people is. The deal our former dipshit mayor Lori Lightfoot struck with NASCAR doesn’t do a whole lot of good for the city, though it didn’t cost the actual city that much. What the street closures that started weeks ago did to places like the Art Institute, or Field Museum, or Shedd Aquarium is another matter, though not one Lightfoot thought she had to concern herself with.

It sure looked good, though

Certainly, as a tourist attraction it didn’t do anything like Taylor Swift did, or that Lollapalooza does on a yearly basis. But a concert at Soldier Field or a weekend-long concert, even on the same patch of land, doesn’t put images of the city on national television quite like this:

Which is almost certainly the whole point. No other NASCAR race will look like this, and no other event in Chicago is going to showcase Grant Park and the skyline in such a way, other than the exterior shots during Bears games that fans have seen hundreds of times throughout their lives. Perhaps Lightfoot and the powers that be thought Chicago needed that kind of showcase instead of becoming a swear word amongst right wing fucksticks and racists. How much that is worth I have no idea, but it has to be worth something.

The race itself was kind of a hilarious disaster, summed up by Chicago traffic proving that it is an unstoppable force that will impact the lives of anyone who dare get near it:

The torrential rain, combined with our roads’ very distant relationship with evenness, made for a lot of cautions and spinouts and crashes. As many on Twitter couldn’t wait to joke, perhaps it was just having to turn right for once was too much for the drivers to overcome consistently.

But again, those that cooked this idea up weren’t really worried about whether the actual race was a classic or not. They got the shots they wanted, the tweets and instas they wanted, and NASCAR got to charge hundreds of dollars to anyone who wanted the privilege of going to see it.

And hey, I go to the Loop maybe once a year, so it’s not skin off my ass. Pretty pictures must be worth a lot.

Shohei Ohtani hits #31

And now your daily Shohei Ohtani homer:

Because they’ve become so commonplace now, 31 so far this season, you have to find the little details of each one to get maximum enjoyment. Mine these days is watching the pitcher’s head drop like a bowling ball simply at the sound of contact. It’s not disappointment at not getting Ohtani out or even giving up a homer. It simply is the droop of someone who has realized the hopelessness and pointlessness of even trying. This is the slumped shoulders of the discovery of the futility of existence. To wit:

Stare not into the abyss, hurlers…

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate, until someone invites him to Bluesky.